When I say “surfing” I mean “other people surfing”, because I most definitely can’t.

Toucheng is a small township in the Northern part of Yilan county. It’s famous for the beach and for the waves. It’s basically the only beach in North-East where it’s possible to surf.

Waves are not like those walls of water that can often be seen in the Hawaii or other worldwide known surfing spots, but they’re good enough to enjoy some time on the board.

The location is also very convenient for people who live in Taipei, being just a 1 hour drive from the city (45 minutes on a good-traffic Day).

It was the first time for me to ever try to take some pictures of surfers. It was a very interesting learning experience. First of all, since the beach is facing the East taking pictures in the morning is a no go. All the pictures that I took had bad exposure because the background was way too bright, so I had to underexpose them and raise the shadows. This led to a big loss in the details of the surfers.

Now I’ve also learned that it’s difficult to catch the right time to start following a surfer. With hundreds of people in the water it can be very challenging to point the camera in the right direction. Sometimes surfer will try to approach a wave and miss it, other times they’ll fall immediately.

I was very glad to see that my Canon SX50 didn’t struggle to focus. My next trip there will definitely be in the late afternoon, and I’ll carry a tripod with me.

Far from the surfing area there are some rocks that could work very well for long exposures and landscape shots. All images in this post were taken with the SX50, I didn’t bring the 6D with me today.